The national section of today's New York Times carries an article under the headline, "Study Says 20% of Girls Reported Abuse by a Date." The article says, "Of the high school girls, ages 14 o 18, surveyed in the study, about 20 percent reported that they had been hit, slapped, shoved or forced into sexual activity by a dating partner." This is a distortion of the finding. The actual question on the study -- which the lengthy Times article manages not to reproduce -- was as follows: "Have you ever been hurt physically or sexually by a date or someone you were going out with? This would include being hurt by being shoved, slapped, hit, or forced into any sexual activity." The students were given the options of answering "a. No, I have never been hurt by a date or someone I was going out with," "b. Yes, I was hurt physically," "c. Yes, I was hurt sexually," or "d. Yes, I was hurt both physically and sexually."
If you read the question carefully, it's clear that a "Yes, I was hurt physically" answer could include a wide variety of injuries other than the "abuse" the Times refers to in the headline or the hitting, slapping, shoving or forced sex that the question and article refer to. For instance, if a boy stepped on a girl's toe accidentally while dancing the fox trot with her, or if a boy and a girl had knocked foreheads accidentally while clumsily kissing, that could well lead to a "Yes, I was hurt physically" answer -- without qualifying as "abuse."
The Times article also omits the fact that 7% of high-school boys said that they had been hurt physically or sexually by a date.
Smartertimes.com doesn't mean to belittle the problem of dating violence among high school students. Those who are trying to call public attention to that problem, however, only risk increasing public skepticism if they base their efforts on such poorly worded survey questions. The New York Times, for its part, fails in this case to approach the survey in a skeptical manner. Instead it parrots the results in the manner of a press release.
Latin America: An article in the international section of today's New York Times revisits the battle over Soviet influence in Central America in the 1980s. A photo cut-line that runs with the article says, "Elliott Abrams, shown with President Reagan in 1983, and John D. Negroponte are two of the Reagan administration figures chosen by President Bush for senior posts dealing with Latin America." Mr. Abrams is, in the Bush administration, senior director at the National Security Council for democracy and human rights. Mr. Negroponte has been nominated as America's permanent representative to the United Nations. These are senior posts dealing with Asia, Europe and the Middle East as much as they are "senior posts dealing with Latin America." They are, in other words, posts with a global scope, not a focus limited to one particular region; the Times cut-line is misleading. The Times article also quotes unchallenged a critic of Mr. Abrams and Mr. Negroponte who refers to "the unilateral American policy" of the 1980s in Latin America. Supporting the Contras wasn't "unilateral"; by definition, it was at least bilateral -- America and the Contras.
Late Again: An article in the international section of today's New York Times today waddles in with the news that Senator Clinton and Senator Schumer are urging the White House to take a tough line against the inclusion of "Zionism is racism" at a U.N. conference. The New York Post reported this on Saturday; Smartertimes.com noted it on Sunday; the New York Times, while criticizing President Bush for his stance on the U.N. conference, has taken until today to note the positions of Senators Schumer and Clinton.
Missing Editorial: When the New York Post's parent company did a deal to get two television stations in New York, the New York Times (July 28, 2001) wrote an editorial calling for Congressional hearings on "the preservation of diversity in the media business and the dangers of excessive consolidation." Somehow, today's paper seems to be missing such an editorial on the takeover of a Long Island public television station by a New York City public television station. No hand-wringing, no call for congressional hearings on this one. No disclosure, either, in today's metro-section news article on the public television "merger," of the fact that the chairman of the New York City station is a personal friend of the publisher of the New York Times, or of the fact that the New York Times has itself been investigating launching a news program on public television.